adding hdd with data from windows pc

[doomdpanic]

hello

how do i add hdd to a fresh installed freenas setup ?

i have 1 hdd with freenas installed on and 3x1tb hdd with data
how do i add these withouth losing the data on them ?

 

[Tywin]

Short answer: you can't.

 

[doomdpanic]

so you cannot save youre data by upgrading to freenas ?
thats kinda odd when you think about it right ?

 

[Tywin]

so you cannot save youre data by upgrading to freenas ?
thats kinda odd when you think about it right ?

So you want the long answer?

FreeNAS uses ZFS. You say your data hard drives are from a Windows PC, presumably formatted as NTFS. These are fundamentally different things. Generally speaking, you cannot reformat a hard drive without losing the data on it. There are two main ways to save your data:

• backup your data to external hard drives, create your ZFS volume from your old drives, then copy your data into FreeNAS; or
• buy new hard drives for your FreeNAS, create your ZFS volume from your new drives, then copy your data into FreeNAS.

Nothing odd about it at all, it's the fundamental nature of switching from one drive format to another incompatible one. You are going to have to cache your data somewhere.

 

[danb35]

thats kinda odd when you think about it right ?

Why would you think it odd that a completely different operating system isn't designed to work with Windows-formatted disks? FreeNAS has the ability to import your data--that is, copy it from your NTFS or FAT disks into your ZFS data pool--but not to directly serve up that data from your Windows-formatted disks.